Three Components of My Personality That I Analyzed After Class Reflection

Firstly, I want to clarify who I am, as the beginning of my personal credo. This will be a reflection of myself. Instead of the superficial discussion of my physical characteristics, I want to talk about my personality and the background that helped me to cultivate this personality.

I believe the environment that I was born and raised has a great impact on my personality and my credo. I was born in Beijing, China. In a wealthy family. Single Child. I’m the third generation of university student in my family: my grandfather was the first generation of university student in my family, he majored in aircraft design and was one of the founder of China’s NASA. Majority of people who live in my community went to graduate school and a great amount of them have doctor degrees. Both of my parents have master degrees, while my father majored in EMBA and my mother majored in Pharmacy.

Born in a family which the majority of its member have received a high level of education, I believe in the power of books, knowledge, education, and thinking. Since I was young, I was told the following things: act and behave appropriately in public, be polite to others, and read books. My experience in my family has a great impact on my personality, especially my parents: they read lot of books and also encourage me to read books. As a result, I enjoy deep thinking and reading; I enjoy great books and movies; I prefer quiet environment rather than noisy; I enjoy talking to educated and polite people. The education that I received in my family forces me to keep myself and the surrounding environment clean and tidy. My family and community is the most important factor that defines who I am.

All the characteristics above guide me and help me in interacting with people and things. Some of them do cause uneasiness because they make me different from some communities and make me hard to get involved in these communities. For example, I’ve had a hard time interacting with some students in CFS community. However, I’ll never give up my credos and beliefs, because it’s always right to to the correct thing. I believe these credos will always guide and help me to do better and become better person in the future.

The socratic seminars that we’ve had in class have changed my beliefs and they have a great positive impact on my life. Several of my ideas and beliefs have been changed after the seminar discussion and my after class reflection. I want to focus on three great ideas: existence, leadership, and religion.

First I want to talk about existence. The reading that changed my mind is Descartes’ Meditations. I’ve struggled to find my place in this world, because I used to believe that I’m just a normal and mundane human being. I didn’t think about my connection to the world. The concepts of Descartes definitely influenced me and help me to build confidence. According to Descartes, “I have persuaded myself that there is absolutely nothing in the world: no sky, no earth, no minds, no bodies”(70, Descartes).

This thought actually inspires me. I began to reflect on myself whether I’m just a part of the real world that is shared by billions of people or I’m the master of my world. This is my thought after the seminar discussion: since my awareness of the world is based on my feelings, my thinking, and my interaction with it, I could assume that this world is purely based on my imagination and thinking. I am the center of my world. Since I had this thought, I became a confident person, because I began to care more about myself instead of others.

This semester, I’ve led a seminar regarding religion. The experience I had when preparing for that seminar discussion helped me to find a reason for my belief. I want to reiterate my belief before I talk about it. I don’t believe in any form of religion, but I do believe in the existence of a spiritual world. It seems controversial but it doesn’t. I believe the reason why I have this kind of mindset is the atmosphere in Chinese culture. To be more specific, the common nature of people.

According to Dr. Ludden, “the belief that supernatural agency inhabits the world and can influence events—is a universal human trait”(Why Do People Believe in God). My reasoning for religion is that in the past, people were not able to find a scientific explanation for events that happened, so they created a symbol to believe in. I, like many other Chinese, don’t believe in any religion but we do believe in the existence of supernatural power. Preparing for this seminar helped me to find the reason of my behavior and helped me to have a better understanding of the way I think.

Finally, I want to talk about leadership I used to believe that a good leader should let people love him or her. However, after studied The Prince of Machiavelli, I realized that to be loved by people is not a wise choice. Machiavelli wrote that “fear is sustained by a dread of punishment which will never abandon you”(Machiavelli, 42). Fear is a more stable source of leadership compare to love.

Based on this idea, I began to adjust my way of interacting with people when working together. In the past, when other people in my group didn’t do well on their part of the project, I used to fix it for them. I learnt from Machiavelli that fear is more effective than love, I stopped to forgive people and do their job for them. This change helped me to be effective when working with people that I’m not familiar with. It’s my pleasure and privilege to have the opportunity to study the masterpieces of great thinkers. Many of their great ideas changed the way I think and they helped me to be a better person.